A few months ago, I participated in a minor kerfluffle on Facebook concerning the British quiz show QI and its potential with an American audience. (The Facebook page dedicated to getting QI to America can be found here. There is an online petition here.) The question raised was whether Americans would understand QI. And in fairness, I will say up front that the person who raised this question did not do so under the assumption that Americans are too stupid to understand it. Her point was that the differences in culture would make the enjoying of it impossible.
I disagree.
I’ve been watching loads of British shows over the course of the last couple of years,starting with QI, and I can say without hesitation that my never having gotten closer to Great Britain than Horseneck Beach in Massachusetts has had very little effect on my ability to enjoy these shows. Do I sometimes not get a reference? Sure. And that’s why God made Wikipedia. In fact, I’ve started watching a wonderful British panel show, one that should be far too obtuse for me to get, called Have I Got News for You. This is a comedy panel game show that makes fun of whatever has been in the news over the course of the previous week. (I also listen to the podcast of the show that inspired HIGNFY way back when, The News Quiz.)
As a result, I now have a working knowledge of the major figures in British politics and find that I can keep up pretty easily, only occasionally pausing in order to look something up. I already know that every week is another low point in the premiership of Gordon Brown. I know that Hazel Blears is short and John Prescott is fat and incomprehensible. I know that Lord Mandelsohn has been sacked four times and that Alistair Darling is, well, Alistair Darling. I know about David Cameron and Ann Widdecombe and Boris Johnson from the Tories and Nick Clegg and Charles Kennedy and Lembit Opik from the Lib-Dems. It’s not that hard.
If you had to ask me which British shows I’ve seen that stand the least chance of finding an audience in America, I would guess that it would just about anything created by Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, although I’d like to think that I’m completely wrong about that. From Vic Reeves Big Night Out to Catterick and beyond, they have created a body of work that is surreal, unique, funny, awful, wonderful, contemptuous, compassionate, and strange. I’m not completely certain of this (and I’m never certain about much of anything when it comes to Vic and Bob), but they might just be great artists.
One of the great misapprehensions of modern times is encapsulted in Bernard Shaw’s well known joke that the United States and Great Britain are “two countries separated by a common language.” Like so many of Shaw’s aphorisms, it is more facile than it is true. In fact we are actually two inflections of the same Anglophone culture, siblings in the family of Anglophone nations. And, like many siblings, we tend to emphasize the few differences rather than the many similarities.
It’s unfortunate. I would love to see QI here. I’d love to see Have I Got News for You and The Fast Show and Bang! Bang! It’s Reeves and Mortimer! here.
